


Your Spine to Hide Behind (Day Three-Patching Up Wounds)

by providentialeyes



Series: Morston Week 2020 [3]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Accidental Stimulation, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, Boot Humping, Grinding, Leg Humping, M/M, Medical, Mild Injury, Poetry, Power Imbalance, Prose and Poetry, heheheheh, imagine me manically giggling while writing these tags do it, it's intermixed, kinda purposeful, vampire john marston
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:35:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25853710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/providentialeyes/pseuds/providentialeyes
Summary: Untimely, he could convince himself so childishly, like what revolution he was in would change how this Change has made him heinousHim wicked and horrific and the kind of monster warned about in folktale and fable pages splayed open in the graynessThe soulful and sorrowful effort to find some cure or redemption in silly stories murmured to infant and veteranAnd devastating him, when the lines offer no more than myth, legend, his fate approaching on black leather bootsoles to stomp him out of any chance of Heaven--“John?” Arthur asks quietly and it’s become their standard greeting.Trepidation.
Relationships: John Marston/Arthur Morgan
Series: Morston Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1874179
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37
Collections: Morston Week 2020





	Your Spine to Hide Behind (Day Three-Patching Up Wounds)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Lost by Dermot Kennedy](https://open.spotify.com/track/57MUBmB0IhftnHLtlQK9JP?si=7tCg3QFZQuSE4QNpp4WXtw)  
> This is a bit different than my usual but my heart lies in poetry and also it's easier for me to write so brain machine go brrrr and also anxiety sorry if this isn't your thing dskfjb

“You’ve done this before, what’s holdin’ you back now?” Arthur mutters, holding the rag to his shoulder.

“Haven’t… Since,” John whispers, pushing his tongue in front of his teeth. 

Where his fangs are breeching, itchy and aching. 

Arthur looks up at him sharply. 

“… You gonna be alright to do this?” Arthur asks slowly, “Do I need to ask someone else?”

“No,” John says quickly, “I… I can do it.”

\--

John does manage to stitch Arthur up, quickly pulling away from the older man’s quiet thanks.

Running back to his own bed and trying to quell the guilt and nausea rolling his guts. 

\--

_Pace and pick at simple things_

_Simple words and tones and tender touches, finger brushes, lasting echoed lingerings_

_Echoed glances and glares and where eyes shouldn’t flee_

_Shouldn’t find homes in crook and crease and revolutions… thirty_

_Revolutions; turning, twisting certainties into hummingbird heart anxieties_

_Heartbeat thundering, deafening, pulsing past the crooned damnings of societies_

_Of normality and loyalty and falsehoods of failings murky but still mirrored problems fostered_

_Problems in men and ‘how things were back then’ but with solutions not so clearly rostered_

_Clearly moved below the grooves and gaps and glaring hurdles to be eagerly vaulted_

_Eagerly biting at bait and ‘boy’s and only in blue eyes firmly halted_

_Firmly led and firmly sat upon a creaky, lumpy, sad excuse of a bed_

_A ringing in his head, as he looks up, looks away, words crawling up his throat, begging to not go unsaid_

\--

“You alright?” Arthur asks slowly, “Been a lil’ off on your own lately.”

“Miss me?” John chokes out the joke, hoping the catch in his voice sound like amusement not fear. 

Exhaustion, weariness, pain, hunger. 

“John,” Arthur says quietly, not-quite stern, “C’mon, don’t do th-”

“How’s your… Your arm?” John asks and swallows, drops his gaze to the side, the other side, hardly even realizing he’s looking for an out. 

An exit, an escape. 

He hardly ever feels like _this_ with Arthur. 

Like he’s trapped.

“It’s fine. Don’t try n’ change the-”

“Art,” John says in his calmest, evenest, least worrying tone, “I… Am _fine_.”

Arthur’s quiet for a long moment. 

Then the older man sighs deeply out of his nose, turning and leaving the way he came. 

Leaving John in his tent, alone with too many decisions and too much indecision. 

\--

_Silver adds a touch of death to everything_

_To the grass, gray, the water, still, his skin as he shifts and it pulls tight and pale over veins, winding_

_Veins that don’t flow the way they used to, don’t keep him upright the way a belly full of hot, ruby blood does_

_Blood that slips down his throat and clings and seeps into him, vibrancy and vitality and some energy so inhuman with the way he feels it buzz_

_It hum, and it quake, and it settle in his gut, a taste for fire and damnation_

_And an appetite for a sticky, stomach-searing, soul-blackening fundamental sensation_

_Fundamental, in consumption, in his acquired required guilty indulgence_

_Guilty, hidden, kicked-into-the-corner and shoved under the rug of ‘untimely appearance’_

_Untimely, he could convince himself so childishly, like what revolution he was in would change how this Change has made him heinous_

_Him wicked and horrific and the kind of monster warned about in folktale and fable pages splayed open in the grayness_

_The soulful and sorrowful effort to find some cure or redemption in silly stories murmured to infant and veteran_

_And devastating him, when the lines offer no more than myth, legend, his fate approaching on black leather bootsoles to stomp him out of any chance of Heaven_

\--

“John?” Arthur asks quietly and it’s become their standard greeting. 

Trepidation. 

“Hey,” John says and closes the books one by one until his stomach lurches with a realization. 

That the blood he’s been lusting for, imagining… 

That he _thought_ he was imagining-

“You hurt?” John asks hoarsely, getting up onto his knees. 

“Yeah, actually, can you help me?” Arthur asks slowly, nodding towards his tent, “Won’t take a minute.”

“Do you-” John swallows against the ache in his teeth, the itch that climbs up his skull and settles behind his eyes, “You sure you need help?”

“I mean I can pro’ly do it myself,” Arthur says slowly, reluctantly, but looks down at the bloodied bandage on his arm like he’s contemplating how to tend to his own wounds. 

Like John would actually ever refuse. 

“Shit,” John mutters, gestures roughly, and follows Arthur to his tent. 

\--

_Grass feels sharper, somehow, feels spinier and as though it’s lashing his shins through the thick cotton_

_Thick and warm but no longer protecting, relenting, soaking through until it’s sodden_

_It’s useless, and just as cold as the rest of his soul, following his own aspiration_

_Own driving force and central star and so many equatable things he doesn’t want to name in this crude, camped-out congregation_

\--

“Just a slice, really, not deep or nothin’,” Arthur murmurs, sitting on his bed in the same spot he’d sat John not three nights ago.

John huffs, as he’s kneeling between Arthur’s feet, reaching for the older man’s wrist with concern. 

Shallow wounds aren’t any kinder to men like them. 

“How’d you even…?” John mutters and turns Arthur’s arm gently, reaches to the side to grab the bag of already-gathered medical things. 

The road-rough rogue equivalent of a doctor’s purse. 

“I don’t think it needs stitches… You just wanna-?”

Arthur’s hand twists in his, wraps firm around his wrist, far less gentle in return. 

John blinks in surprise, looks up at Arthur worriedly. 

“When’s the last time you ate somethin’?” Arthur asks, low and deadly. 

John doesn’t respond, can’t find any proper thing to say to divert this interrogation. 

“S’been weeks, John,” Arthur says and he sounds hurt. 

Like John’s hunger is just as much of an ache in him as it is in the younger man. 

“I told you I’m-”

“You look dead.”

“Ain’t I?”

“Are you?” Arthur whispers, squeezes John’s wrist, pulls him closer, “You don’t feel dead, you don’t _sound_ dead.”

“Might as well be,” John mutters roughly and drops his gaze. 

Only to tense as his chin is grabbed, held in place. 

Arthur’s forearm under his nose, and John sees the shape of it then. 

How clean and straight and barely deep the cut is. 

How it ever-so-slightly curves around the shape of Arthur’s wrist, like the blade was pulled across…

“Arthur,” John says shakily, “I… Don’t do somethin’ like-”

 _“You’re_ the one who ain’t sure,” Arthur says, quiet and firm, “Not me.”

John swallows and swallows and his tongue is somehow soaked and still sticking to his throat as he breathes carefully. 

Closes his eyes, slowly, presses his lips to Arthur’s wrist, too close to lovingly. 

“Sure?” John asks, though it comes out foreign, growling, rolling. 

“Yeah, go ‘head.”

John doesn’t second guess the permission, sinks his fangs in deep, with pin-prick accuracy. 

Hunger rolls and rumbles into _hungry_ , both his hands coming up to grip at Arthur’s arm, cradle it like a dog with a stolen bone. 

Nearly whining at the relief that spreads like honey in coffee when they can afford greater luxuries and Arthur’s _blood_ shouldn’t taste this fucking sweet. 

Grasping and fretting and swallowing, fingertips marking blunt-force bruises in Arthur’s lively flesh. 

His warm and welcoming skin. 

John manages to open his eyes, look up at Arthur only to see heat staring right back at him. 

That great blue yonder trapped in thin rings around wide and wanting soul. 

John lurches, claws at Arthur’s arm when boot-leather presses between his thighs and those dark and depthless and _damning_ eyes watch him too close to lovingly. 

And all John can do is whisper. 

Plead. 

Blood staining his mouth like some sick and cultivated calla-lily, the spread of red into pink inviting 

Arthur shifts his leg and slides his fingers to the base of John’s neck, feels the younger swallow against the webbed skin forming a collar from thumb to forefinger-tip. 

John breaks and breathes and swallows and swallows and _swallows_ and pleads. 

Quiet, and breathlessly, for the first time in weeks feeling both at the will of something other than his hunger and at the same time so, _so_ complete. 

**Author's Note:**

> [my twitter](https://www.twitter.com/gwennolmarie)  
> Munchy is hosting the Morston Week here's more info  
> [Morston Week Twitter](https://twitter.com/MorstonWeek)  
> [Morston Week Tumblr](https://morstonweek.tumblr.com/)  
> And here's [the collection!](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/MorstonWeek2020)


End file.
